Blue whale research in the Golfo Corcovado and Melimoyu: the 2012 field season

The Melimoyu site is owned by a for-profit conservation company called Patagonia Sur, which is setting up an exciting new research institute called the Melimoyu Ecosystem Research Institute, or MERI, and has lanched this venture with a flagship project on blue whale acoustics, which is where Dr. Rodrigo Hucke-Gaete (the principal investigator and my PhD supervisor) and I (the grad student!) come in. This project involves the installation of 6 acoustic buoys throughout the feeding ground, recording continuously over a 6 month period, to look at movements to and from and within the feeding ground. This project will provide Rodrigo and I with essential information over a time period (i.e. autumn/winter) and in places that we have not yet covered, and will add huge value to my on-going PhD research. I am of course delighted that the project is working out, that we have installed the buoys in January 2012.

Here is the buoy deployment team!: Fred Channel (buoy technician), Rodrigo Hucke (director Blue Whale Center), me, Tomas Montt (first mate), Matthew Westcott (captain!), Rafaela Landea (Patagonia Sur conservation coordinator) on board the Williwaw:

Credit: Rafaela Landea

After the buoy deployment trip, I spent February and March 2012 in Melimoyu working on the more oceanographic aspects of my research on board the Patagonia Sur boat “Chucao”, as well as providing visitors with some insights into blue whales and their feeding ground.

Credit: Sebastian Yancovic

Credit: Sebastian Yancovic

I arrived with my assistant Jaime Gutierrez (who was then replaced by Oliver Alarcon) at the beginning of February and we set up a wet lab and a dry lab from scratch in amongst the ecotourism facilities at Melimoyu. These are the very first MERI research facilities! And I have my supervisor Dr. Renato Quinones to thank for going all out with providing excellent oceanographic sampling equipment and human resources to make this happen. We also constructed a steel arm on board the Chucao from which to deploy our oceanographic sampling equipment. So I am really pleased with the research set up we now have at Melimoyu.

But as is often the case, this field season was a mixed bag. Getting out on the water and seeing whales has been tricky due to particularly bad weather and most critically due to very low whale sightings this year. Some years are just better than others, and it seems that the whales have preferred other grounds this year, or we have just not coincided with them as we did last year. But that is the nature of the game. And despite these issues, we have collected interesting samples that I am sure will yield interesting results.

Credit: Sebastian Yancovic

Credit: Sebastian Yancovic

These low blue whale sightings are no doubt linked to what I have seen in my krill net trawls: distinctly low numbers of krill and high numbers of gelatinous zooplankton like salps, ctenophores and jellyfish. This is a very  different picture from last year, where I was getting thousands of krill in my net and seeing up to 6 blue whales feeding at one time in one feeding patch. So there are oceanographic and ecological cycles over scales that we do not understand that greatly affect the plankton species of the feeding ground and therefore the presence of whales. And I must say that even though it has been disappointing to not see what we saw last year, I am still fascinated by what is going on and eager to understand why some years are krill-abundant and others not so much. So I am looking forward to coming back in winter and to studying the feeding ground with or without whales in sight. And I am also really excited about getting the acoustic buoy data back and comparing what I have seen over the summer with whale presence or absence as determined from the acoustic buoy data.

So this is an exciting year for blue whale research! And I am extremely grateful to those who have and are funding and supporting this work. In particular, my supervisors Renato and Rodrigo have been incredible and visionary, as have the Patagonia Sur team. Also, my field assistants, Jaime and Oliver, have been amazing and a huge wealth of knowledge.